Three experiments compared wrist and arm performance in a cyclical Fitts’ target task. The purpose of Experiment I was to determine if movement kinematics differed for wrist/elbow flexion/extension movements to targets of varying difficulty. Participants were asked to flex/extend a manipulandum in the horizontal plane at the wrist and elbow joint in an attempt to move back and forth between two targets. Online knowledge of effector position was displayed as a visual trace on a projector screen. Target widths were manipulated with amplitude constant (16 degrees) in order to create Indexes of Difficulty of 1.5, 3, 4.5, and 6. Results failed to detect differences in elbow and wrist movements either in terms of movement time, movement accuracy, or kinematic characteristics of the movement. In studies that have reported difference in wrist and arm performance in Fitts’ target tasks, experimenters have typically utilized visual amplification to counterbalance the small resulting wrist movements. The purpose of Experiments II and III was to investigate how changes in task parameters and visual gain play a role in providing a performance advantage for the wrist. In these experiments arm movement amplitude was increased to 32 degrees and wrist amplitude was decreased to 8 degrees. Results found similar overall movement times for arm and wrist movements. However, kinematic analysis of the movement revealed relatively large dwell times for wrist movements at IDs of 4.5 and 6. Removal of dwell time resulted in faster movement times for the wrist compared to arm. The results of these three experiments add to the limited literature examining how different effectors perform a Fitts’ target task. These findings suggest that performance differences in past literature may be due to the visual amplification often used when arm, wrist, and finger movements are studied.

Boarding, alighting and seating maneuvers were monitored on selected Arlington Transit (ART) bus routes in order to determine the link between passenger demographics, seating preferences and boarding and alighting times within the system. The data collection methodology employed digital stopwatch timings of boardings and alightings in conjunction with a coordinate-based spreadsheet seating chart tracking system in order to document passenger movements and seating occupancies. Passengers were visually profiled according to their ethnicity, sex, general age group and bulkiness. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to develop boarding and alighting models, and t-tests were used to isolate statistically significant differences between profiled groups in terms of their seating preferences and inter-group separation distances aboard the buses. It was observed that female passengers tend to sit closer to other passengers than males do, and that older female passengers have a preference for sitting in aisle seats and towards the lower level front of the bus - each of these preferences is linked with shorter boarding times. Males, in general, tend to prefer window seating to aisle seating, and this preference is linked with longer boarding and alighting times. It was also observed that younger passengers prefer less efficient upper level seating to lower level seating and that white passengers, on average, tend to sit closer to other white passengers on routes where whites are a minority in terms of passenger composition. Monetary fare payment was observed to contribute to longer boarding times than the use of a swipe card (e.g., SmarTrip® card). / Master of Science

Bus Signal Priority (BSP), which has been deployed in many cities around the world, is a traffic signal enhancement strategy that facilitates efficient movement of buses through signalized intersections. Most BSP systems do not work well in transit networks with nearside bus stop because of the uncertainty in dwell time. Unfortunately, most bus stops on arterial roadways are of this type in the U.S. This dissertation showed that dwell time at nearside bus stops could be modeled using weighted least squares regression. More importantly, the prediction intervals associated with the estimate dwell time were calculated. These prediction intervals were subsequently used in the improved BSP algorithm that attempted to reduce the negative effects of nearside bus stops on BSP operations. The improved BSP algorithm was tested on urban arterial section of Bellaire Boulevard in Houston, Texas. VISSIM, a micro simulation model was used to evaluate the performance of the BSP operations. Prior to evaluating the algorithm, the parameters of the micro simulation model were calibrated using an automated Genetic Algorithm based methodology in order to make the model accurately represent the traffic conditions observed in the field. It was shown that the improved BSP algorithm significantly improved the bus operations in terms of bus delay. In addition, it was found that the delay to other vehicles on the network was not statistically different from other BSP algorithms currently being deployed. It is hypothesized that the new approach would be particularly useful in North America where there are many transit systems that utilize nearside bus stops in their networks.

The context of this study is the increasing need for public transport as issues over high private vehicle usage are becoming increasingly obvious. Public transport services need to compete with private transport to improve patronage, and issues with reliability need to be addressed. Bus bunching affects reliability through disruptions to the scheduled headways. The purpose of this study was to collect and analyse data to compare how travel time and dwell time vary, to explore the variation of key variables, and to better understand the sources of these variations. The Orbiter bus service in Christchurch was used as a case study, as it is particularly vulnerable to bus bunching. The dwell time was found to be more variable than travel time. It appeared the Canterbury earthquake had significantly reduced the average speeds for the Orbiter service. In 1964, Newell and Potts described a basic bus bunching theory, which was used as the basis for an Excel bus bunching model. This model allows input variables to vary stochastically. Random values were generated from four specified distributions derived from manually collected data, allowing variance across all bus platforms and buses. However the complexity resulted in stability and difficulty in achieving convergence, so the model was run in single Monte Carlo simulations. The outputs were realistic and showed a higher degree of bunching behaviour than previous models. The model demonstrated bunching phenomena that had not been observed in previous models, including spontaneously un-pairing, overtaking of buses delayed at platforms, and odd-numbered bunches of three buses. Furthermore, the study identified areas of further research for data collection and model development.

In a world with an increasing flow of written information online and offline, the demand for automatic translation, simplification and summarization technology is growing. The tool StilLett uses several lexical and semantic rules to automatically simplify text, shortening the time from original text to simplified text compared to manual simplification. Four of the simplification types were evaluated in this study, using three different eye tracking measures; total dwell time, number of regressions, and average fixation duration. No statistically significant differences were found for any of the simplification types when compared to the corresponding original sentences, indicating that for this population the difficulty of the sentences was roughly the same.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第22653号 / 工博第4737号 / 新制||工||1740(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院工学研究科都市社会工学専攻 / (主査)教授 山田 忠史, 教授 藤井 聡, 准教授 SCHMOECKER Jan-Dirk / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DFAM

Traffic congestion has continued to grow as a result of urbanization, which is associated with an increase in car ownership. As a way to improve the efficiency of the transportation system, emerging technologies including Connected Automated Vehicles (CAVs), loop detectors, Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATISs), and Advanced Public Transportation Systems (APTSs) are being deployed. One of the successful techniques that has demonstrated benefits for system users, operators and agencies is Transit Signal Priority (TSP). TSP favors transit vehicles in the allocation of green times at traffic signals. A successful deployment of TSP depends on different factors including the prediction of various components of transit vehicle travel times to predict when a vehicle would arrive at a traffic signal. Current TSP state-of-the-art and state-of-practice disregards the impact of bus stops, transit vehicle characteristics, driver, and the prevailing traffic conditions on the predicted arrival time of transit vehicles at traffic signals. Considering these factors is important the success of TSP hinges on the ability to predict transit vehicle arrival times at traffic signals in order to provide these vehicles with priority service. The main contribution of this research effort relates to the modeling of the various components of transit vehicle travel times. This model explicitly captures the impact of passengers, drivers and vehicle characteristics on transit vehicle travel times thus providing better models for use in various transit applications, including TSP. Furthermore, the thesis presents a comprehensive understanding of the determinants of each travel time component. In essence, the determinants of each component, the stochasticity in these determinants and the correlation between them are explicitly modeled and captured. To achieve its contribution, the study starts by improving the current state-of-the-art and state-of-practice transit vehicle boarding/alighting (BA) models by explicitly accounting for the different factors that impact BA times while ensuring a relatively generalized formulation. Current formulations are specific for the localities and bus configurations that they were developed for. Alternatively, the proposed BA time model is independent of the transit vehicle capacity and transit vehicle configuration (except for the fact that it is only valid for two-door buses – a separate door for alighting and boarding the bus) and accounts for the number of on-board passengers, boarding and alighting passengers. The model also captures the stochasticity and the correlation between the model coefficients with minimum computational requirements. Next the model was extended to capture the bus driver and vehicle impacts on the transit vehicle delay in the vicinity of bus stops, using a vehicle kinematics model with maximum speed and acceleration constraints to model the acceleration/deceleration delay. The validation of the model was done using field data that cover different driving conditions. Results of this work found that the proposed formulation successfully integrated the human and vehicle characteristics component in the model and that the new formulation improves the estimation of the total delay that transit vehicles experience near bus stops. Finally, the model was extended to estimate the time required to merge into the adjacent lane and the time required to traverse a queue upstream of a traffic signal. The final part of this study models the bus arrival time at traffic signal using shockwave and prediction model in a connected environment. This section aims to model the transit vehicle arrival time at traffic signal considering the impact of signal timing and the prevailing traffic conditions. In summary, the proposed model overcomes the current state-of-the-art models in the following ways: 1) it accounts for the vehicle capacity and the number of on-board passengers on bus BA times, 2) it captures the stochasticity in the bus stop demand and the associated BA times, 3) it captures the impact of the traffic in modeling the delay at a bus stop , 4) it incorporates the driver and vehicle impact by modeling the acceleration and deceleration time, and 5) it uses shockwave analysis to estimate bus arrival times through the use of emerging technology data. Through statistical modeling and evaluation using field and simulated data, the model overcomes the current state-of practice and state-of art transit vehicle arrival time models. / Doctor of Philosophy / Traffic congestion grows rapidly causing increment in travel time, reducing travel time reliability, and reducing the number of public transportation riders. Using the Advanced Public Transportation Systems (APTS) technology with Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATISs) helps in improving transportation network travel time by providing real-time travel information. One of the successful techniques that has demonstrated benefits for system users, operators and agencies is Transit Signal Priority (TSP). A successful deployment of TSP depends on different factors including the prediction of various components of transit vehicle travel times to predict when a vehicle would arrive at a traffic signal. Current TSP state-of-the-art and state-of-practice disregards the impact of bus stops, transit vehicle characteristics, driver, and the prevailing traffic conditions on the predicted arrival time of transit vehicles at traffic signals. The difficulty of modeling the various determinants of the transit vehicle travel time as explicit variables rather than include some of them are implicitly modeled due to two main reasons. First, there are various significant factors affecting estimating the transit vehicle arrival time including; the passenger demand at bus stop, driver characteristics, vehicle characteristics and the adjacent prevailing traffic conditions. Second, the stochasticity and the fluctuation nature of each variables as they differ spatiotemporally. The research presented in this thesis provides a comprehensive investigation of the determinants of different transit vehicle travel time components of the transit vehicle arrival time at traffic signal leading to a better implementing of TSP. This study was initiated due to the noticeable overlooking of the different factors including human and vehicle behavior in the current state-of-practice and state-of-art which, as a result, fails to capture and incorporate the impact of these components on the implementing of TSP.

Magnetorheological (MR) fluids offer solutions to many engineering challenges. The success of MR fluid is apparent in many disciplines, ranging from the automotive and civil engineering communities to the biomedical engineering community. This well documented success of MR fluids continues to motivate current and future applications of MR fluid. One such application that has been considered recently is MR fluid devices for use in impact and other high velocity applications. In such applications, the fluid environment within the device may be well beyond the scope of our understanding for these fluids. To date, little has been done to explore the suitability of MR fluids in such high velocity and high shear applications. While future applications may expose the fluid to adverse flow conditions, we must also consider current and existing applications which expose the fluid to extreme flow environments. Consider, for example, an MR damper intended for automotive primary suspensions, in which shear rates may exceed 10^5 s^-1. Flow conditions within these dampers far exceed existing fluid behavior characterization. The aim of the current study is to identify the behavior of the fluid under these extreme operating conditions. Specifically, this study intends to identify the behavior of MR fluid subject to high rates of shear and high flow velocities. A high shear rheometer is built which allows for the high velocity testing of MR fluids. The rheometer is capable of fluid velocities ranging from 1 m/s to 37 m/s, with corresponding shear rates ranging from 0.14x10^5 s^-1 to 2.5x10^5 s^-1. Fluid behavior is characterized in both the off-state and the on-state. The off-state testing was conducted in order to identify the high shear viscosity of the fluid. Because the high shear behavior of MR fluid is largely governed by the behavior of the carrier fluid, the carrier fluid behavior was also identified at high shear. Experiments were conducted using the high shear rheometer and the MR fluid was shown to exhibit nearly Newtonian post-yield behavior. A slight thickening was observed for growing shear rates. This slight thickening can be attributed to the behavior of the carrier fluid, which exhibited considerable thickening at high shear. The purpose of the on-state testing was to characterize the MR effect at high flow velocities. As such, the MR fluid was run through the rheometer at various flow velocities and a number of magnetic field strengths. The term "dwell time" is introduced and defined as the amount of time the fluid spends in the presence of a magnetic field. Two active valve lengths were considered, which when coupled to the fluid velocities, generated dwell times ranging from 12 ms to 0.18 ms. The yield stress was found from the experimental measurements and the results indicate that the magnitude of the yield stress is sensitive to fluid dwell time. As fluid dwell times decrease, the yield stress developed in the fluid decreases. The results from the on-state testing clearly demonstrate a need to consider fluid dwell times in high velocity applications. Should the dwell time fall below the response time of the fluid, the yield stress developed in the fluid may only achieve a fraction of the expected value. These results imply that high velocity applications may be subject to diminished controllability for falling dwell times. Results from this study may serve to aid in the design of MR fluid devices intended for high velocity applications. Furthermore, the identified behavior may lead to further developments in MR fluid technology. In particular, the identified behavior may be used to develop or identify an MR fluid well suited for high velocity and high shear applications. / Ph. D.

In this thesis the Tobii eye-tracker 4L was used to investigate how well eye-tracking solutions such as a confirmation-click and dwell-time algorithm compares to the standard mouse input device when performing selection tasks in a map environment. In order to distinguish the different complexity one could face, two user cases are proposed. Scenario one includes non clustered objects. Scenario two include clustered occluded objects. A user study with nine different participants where conducted in order to compare the execution times and find out how error prone the different methods were. Each test participant performed eight different tests, three in the non-clustered scenario and five in the clustered scenario. In two of the tests in the clustered scenario test participants were aided with zooming through a zoom algorithm. The methods was evaluated by calculating the average execution times and errors along with the corresponding standard deviations. In order to grasp the users experience a subjective cognitive load score was calculated with the help of a questionnaire. The eye-tracker methods was found to be competitive in comparison to mouse interaction in the more simple non-clustered case. However, in a more complex scenario such as the clustered case the mouse interaction had the lowest average completion time and cognitive load score. A different type of selection behaviour was discovered among the test participants in the clustered scenario due to the difference in precision between the eye-tracker and mouse interaction. Finally interesting areas to consider in the future is presented and discussed. / I denna avhandling användes en Tobii eye-tracker 4L för att undersöka hur väl eye-tracking metoder så som en bekräftelseklick och dwell-time algoritm jämför sig med standard mus interaktion vid objekt selektion i en kartmiljö. För att urskilja variationen i komplexitet man kan möta föreslås två olika användarfall. Scenario ett inkluderar objekt som är distinktivt separerade och därav ej grupperade. Scenario två inkluderar grupperade samt ockluderade objekt. En användarstudie med nio olika deltagare genomfördes för att jämföra exekveringstiderna och ta reda på hur felbenägna de olika metoderna var. Varje testdeltagare utförde åtta olika tester, tre i det icke-grupperade scenariot och fem i det grupperade scenariot. I två av testerna i det grupperade scenariot fick deltagarna hjälp med att zooma genom en zoomalgoritm. Metoderna utvärderades genom att beräkna de genomsnittliga exekveringstiderna samt antal fel tillsammans med motsvarande standardavvikelser. För att förstå hur användarna upplevde de olika metoderna togs en subjektiv kognitiv belastningspoäng fram genom ett frågeformulär. Eye-tracker metoderna var konkurrenskraftiga i jämförelse med musinteraktion i det enklare fallet där objekt ej var grupperade. I ett mer komplext scenario, såsom i det grupperade fallet, hade dock musinteraktionen den lägsta genomsnittliga exekveringstiden och kognitiva belastningspoängen. En annan typ av selektions beteende upptäcktes bland testdeltagarna i det grupperade scenariot på grund av skillnaden i precision mellan eye-trackern och musinteraktionen. Slutligen presenteras och diskuteras intressanta områden att överväga vid framtida arbeten.

The use of short columns, higher carrier gas velocity and fast temperature programs in Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography coupled to Time-of- Flight Mass Spectrometry (GC x GC/TOFMS) technique is expected to increase the speed of analysis up to several orders of magnitude when compared to conventional gas chromatography (GC) or gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). A systematic evaluation of the GC x GC/TOFMS configuration for high-speed applications has received little attention in the literature. The feasibility of High Speed Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography coupled to Mass Spectrometry (High speed GC x GC/MS) for complex mixtures has been investigated in this thesis. A particular focus was placed on comparing conventional scanning quadrupole mass spectrometry (qMS) with a newly available non-scanning time-of-flight instruments (TOFMS). Experiments were carried out using GC/qMS, GC x GC/qMS, GC/TOFMS and GC x GC/TOFMS both in normal (slow) and fast temperature rates coupled with high frequency modulation in GC x GC. Initially a complex mixture consists of 24 semivolatile compounds was used as the analyte for the above purpose. In the initial experiments parameters like acquisition rate and duty cycle for qMS were determined to evaluate the effectiveness of the instrument for fast analysis. The practical duty cycle value obtained for the qMS was only about 18 % for single ion and one compound at a dwell time of 10 ms in SIM mode. In both high-speed GC/qMS and high-speed GC x GC/qMS techniques only about 40 % of the components in the complex mixture were found to be well separated. The acquisition rate of scanning instruments like qMS is incompatible for fast eluting peaks in high speed GC. TOFMS that has an acquisition rate of several hundred spectra per second offer the potential to define the fast GC peaks accurately. The high quality spectra from TOFMS also enable deconvolution of coeluting peaks in the complex mixtures. The advantage of the automated spectral deconvolution is demonstrated for the identification of the coeluting peaks in the complex mixtures. Coelution of peaks is also observed with highspeed GC/TOFMS technique. The high-speed GC x GC/TOFMS was also tested with two different analyte system ??? A pesticide mixture and platformate (an aromatic mixture) to evaluate the suitability for high-speed analysis of complex mixtures. A poor resolution was observed for the pesticide mixture in the two-dimensional plane and it appeared, as there was nearly no orthogonal separation in the second dimension. The platformate mixture displayed a better two-dimensional separation. Chromatographic peak resolution is not really a primary requirement for locating and identifying the coeluting compounds in high-speed GC x GC/TOFMS technique. However, it was observed that the high-speed GC x GC/TOFMS too faced problem to unscramble the mass spectra of those compounds with similar structure and sharing the same unique masses.